


I Gotta Run

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Veep
Genre: Backstory, Bisexuality, Bullying, F/M, Loss of Virginity, M/M, POV Second Person, References to Insurance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 11:16:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5867254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So you lock it down as best you can and build a hard gray shell, running from the idea that you need anyone for anything more than quick trashy sex and connections to real power. You’re Dan Egan. You’re smooth, you’re clutch, you’re the iceman. You're a runner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Gotta Run

**Author's Note:**

> This all takes place in the universe Rillrill and Onlytheshortones and I have built together, also known as the Insurance-verse. I recommend reading some of Rillrill's fics if you want an expansion on any of these characters.

When you’re thirteen, you kiss Ethan Horowitz at summer camp, your very first one. He’s got light brown hair and square, wire-framed glasses. His hands, tentatively on your shoulders, are soft. It happens sitting in the grass by the archery fields just half an hour before curfew, the first dozen stars peeking out. The conversation peters off after a couple minutes and you will never be sure which of you leans forward first but you’re glad someone does. You both recently gotten rid of your braces and he tastes like Mountain Dew and dining hall mash potatoes.

When the kids from Cabin Six come across you during a late night hike to the lake Ethan springs back like you’re scalding him, but it’s too late. They already saw. Whispers break out as Ethan runs back towards his cabin and you stand to follow suit. By the next morning the whole mess hall is buzzing about Dan “Fagn”, the crazy homo who threw himself at Ethan. _That’s not what happened!_ you almost scream, but you’re not going to be that guy, the one who works himself up and just causes more bullying with his freakouts.

So you stare straight ahead while they shove and snicker, you ignore your eleven-year-old brother’s crestfallen face when Keenan McKinley grabs your neck and forces you to answer how much you wanna suck his dick. You pretend not to be bothered by the loss of a handjob from Alyssa Nardini, which you’ve been angling for all summer. You make it through four days of hell without crying or getting kicked out for fighting, and on the last afternoon you write Ethan a long letter in your journal about how you and he need to fuck these people, they don’t know what’s going on, you’re better than them. You hand deliver it to him at a quiet moment so no one intercepts it or sees and he rips it in half and tells you to _fuck off, faggot._

So you do. You flip him off and drag Dave into your dad’s car with a slam of the door, happy to be going back to Rochester for the first time ever. You vow to never speak to Ethan or make eyes at another boy again, and you run.

* * *

When you’re sixteen, you start dating Katie Flynn, your very first girlfriend. She’s three inches shorter than you and has straight strawberry blonde hair down to her waist. You met on debate team and she’s the only other person in the sophomore class who reads the paper. Your mom loves her because her family goes to St. Patrick’s every Sunday just like yours, and your dad gets a little warmer towards you, elbowing you and talking about _what a firecracker you got there, Danny._

She tastes like strawberry lip gloss when you kiss, a little sloppy because you don’t have a lot of practice, but you get it. In the lunchroom, outside her house, in the back of your car. You lose your virginity together in her bedroom when her parents take her little sister to a gymnastics meet in Syracuse. You’re so nervous you momentarily forget how to unroll a condom and last less than two minutes, but she’s soft and warm and just as freaked out, so overall it goes okay.

She wants to snuggle afterwards. That’s the word she uses, _snuggle_ , wearing your lacrosse shirt like a dress because no matter how smart Katie Flynn is she’s still a teenage girl who's seen too many romantic comedies. Your chest is feeling kind of tight and you just want to put on your pants and drive to the lake and be alone, process this experience, but you make yourself lie there and stroke her hair for ten minutes - you feel weird, kind of warm and fuzzy when you look at her face and perfect pink lips, and you figure you owe her ten minutes - before you need to _move._

Three weeks later she’s leaning against the locker next to yours fighting tears because she’s late, _I’m late Danny_ and you can’t feel your hands or feet and you have to excuse yourself from chemistry class twice to go vomit in the boy’s bathroom because you’re Catholic and she’s Catholic and you’ve already started your ED application for Yale and oh God what will your parents say this wasn’t supposed to happen you were so careful you were _so careful._  

You don’t fully understand the word _relief_ until she calls you at 2 AM three days later to tell you she’s gotten her period.

She wants to keep in touch when you go to Cornell and she goes to SUNY Plattsburgh, see if you can make the long distance thing work, but all you can think about is that terrifying day by the lockers and Katie is sweet and hot but not special enough to ruin your life and your plan over. So you smile and don’t return her calls and you run, all the way to Cornell.

* * *

When you’re nineteen you start dating Russell Aaronson, your very first boyfriend. He’s six years older than you and all dark hair and eyes and a beard that scratches your face when you kiss, but you don’t mind, you kind of like it. He lips are soft and taste like organic offbrand toothpaste and coffee. He’s an environmental policy doctoral student who talks to you all the time about what’s going on in the news and introduces you to The Smiths.

It’s a little hard to say at first, _I have a boyfriend,_ because it just makes faint memories of summer camp kids chanting _Dan Fagn_ louder in your mind, but you don’t like to think about that and besides, Russell is such a _damn good boyfriend_ it gets easier to acknowledge everyday.

You lose another kind of virginity to him, one that’s a lot more embarrassing to admit to still having because you are nowhere near Russell’s first anything, but Russ is sweet and careful and teaches you how to bottom and give blow jobs. He makes you talk about STDs and how to ward against AIDS and you almost boil over with Catholic shame but he’s persistent and eventually you get better at asking him to spank you a little or maybe tie your wrist to the bedpost. He loves that you discover a penchant for lacy underwear and occasionally wear it around the apartment.

He holds you a lot after sex, especially on nights you come home after a victory at the district office and you feel your whole body buzzing and trembling with joy and anxiety and triumph to the point where the world is starting to spin. The warm and fuzzy feelings make a reappearance, but longer and stronger than with Katie, and when he tells you he loves you, it doesn’t make you so afraid. In fact, it feels more and more like something you will someday say too.

When he gives you a ring just a few months shy of your twenty-second birthday, your breath hitches a little but you nod and put it on and he fucks you four times that night, and it feels so good but not in your stomach, because Russ nuzzles your neck until dawn murmuring about getting a job teaching in the city and you two can live there together and be _husbands_ and the whole thing just feels so _stagnant._ Stuck and motionless and forever.

So right before graduation you steel yourself and put on jeans and sneakers and take him to a chain restaurant to reinforce what Not A Big Deal this is because it’s not, it can’t be, just take the ring back Russ. And then you pack up the apartment you shared, the apartment where you wrote a billion pages of plans and manifestos and love letters, and you only keep the first two, and you run.

* * *

When you’re twenty-seven you meet Amy Brookheimer, your very first...not girlfriend, but first _thing_ past a one night stand in recent memory. She’s an Scandinavian princess with icy blue eyes and a Blackberry to match yours and you are in _awe_ of her.

She’s on your level or above in every subject, and the evening you spend getting drunk on martinis and arguing reproductive health policy with her is the happiest time you’ve had since you moved to D.C. You ask her if she’d like to go out again and she laughs, Oh, _you didn’t think this was a date, Dan?_ And you feel embarrassed and angry because being in upstate New York and being with Russ has made you _soft,_ but before you can tell her to go to hell she leans forward on her giant-ass black heels and kisses you hard with slightly chapped lips. She doesn’t taste like anything but nothing in this town has any flavour and the force feels good because it feels like _something_ so you kiss her back.

You get together a couple of times more times and you don’t have sex more than once or twice, but you do other stuff, always talking, arguing, bouncing ideas off each other while you bite and blow and eat and kiss in that pushy way and you have someone on your side, someone to fight against the world with, and then you admit to her that _you’re glad we’re buddies._

And just like that it’s over. She avoids your texts and goes back to her twenty hour days working for Senator Meyer and you’re hit again with your stupidity, your fury towards that tiny little part of you that wants affection and company and keeps taking control of the rest of you. So you lock it down as best you can and build a hard gray shell, running from the idea that you need anyone for anything more than quick trashy sex and connections to real power. You’re Dan Egan. You’re smooth, you’re clutch, you’re the iceman.

* * *

You’re thirty-four when you meet Jonah Ryan, and you _want_ him.

That giant, broad shouldered, dumbass viking with too much dark hair and hazel eyes who can’t shut his huge mouth. His lips are pale and pink and taste like Gatorade and vending machine Doritos which should be fucking disgusting but you just want to bite them bloody. It’s physical, you just need to hook up with him and get it out of your system and move on. That’s what you tell yourself.

And a hook-up, a messy handjob in a dark car, turns into another and then another and soon there's kissing and sex, frustratingly good sex, with smacking and biting and the first time you’re on the receiving end of a fuck in years, and he’s loud and obnoxious and even though you work for the same goddamn party, the same singular woman, he finds a way to argue with you on every issue and point that comes up.

You give as good as you get and then not long after there’s a drawer of his things at your apartment and you let him see you in your black lace and he doesn’t laugh and he tells you he has dyslexia and you don’t laugh, and months turn into years and fights and anxiety attacks from both sides, but mostly yours if you’re keeping count and he holds you and you hold him and your career climbs and climbs and all he does is support you and hang on and let you fly. One day there’s a ring on his finger. And after _a lot_ of fighting and running and sifters of scotch, you walk like a man to his door and you talk - then there’s one on yours too. 

Society dictates a small ceremony be held so that’s what you do, a no-frills courthouse affair that's quick and a little awkward until you get home and he fucks you hard with CNN on in the background and then when the stars come out hours later he softly, strangely tenderly, carries you to bed and you let him.

And now, here you are. You’re lying under the covers in bed - the bed you two _share_ , have shared for going on half a decade, and your giant husband is asleep next to you, in his boxers and tee-shirt, holding you tight around the stomach as he breathes deep and slow.

And you look down at your ring, glinting in the blue light of Jonah’s alarm clock and you don’t feel humiliated or terrified or stagnant or duped. You feel...still. Clicked into place. Like you have no need to leave this bed or this man - Jonah, not Amy or Russell or Katie or Ethan - for the foreseeable eternity.

  
So you lean harder into your husband’s chest. And you stay.


End file.
